The First Tack

The summer evening lay warm and still over the little harbor on the west coast. The sun had already begun to lean toward the horizon, and the water in the bay was almost glassy, ruffled only on the outside of the breakwater where a faint breeze was coming in. Edvin was nine years old and stood on the jetty in his yellow life jacket with two fingers tucked in his pocket. Beside him, his grandfather leaned over the gunwale of the little wooden dinghy and untied the mooring line. The boat rocked softly against the fenders. 'Tonight you sail,' said grandfather. He said it as if it weren't anything special at all. But for Edvin it was the most special thing he could imagine.

The boat was called Seagull, and it was the smallest boat in the whole harbor. It had a white, slightly yellowed sail cloth rolled around the boom, a varnished gunwale that smelled of warm old pine, and floorboards polished smooth by many summers of salt water. Edvin stepped down into the boat one step at a time, exactly the way grandfather had taught him. Never jump down into a boat, grandfather always said. A boat is not a chair. It moves while you move. The boat tipped, and Edvin sat down quickly on the thwart. It smelled of tar and sea and something sweet from the beach meadows at the inner end of the bay.

Grandfather stepped in after him, careful and sure, so the boat hardly moved. He sat down on the rearmost thwart, beside the tiller, and began to loosen the white sail from the boom. 'Today it's a steady northwesterly,' he said. 'Perfect wind for a beginner. Three meters per second, maybe four out between the skerries.' Edvin nodded as if he understood exactly what that meant. Really he just knew that 'steady' was good and that there were no big waves in the bay. The sail unrolled and rustled a little as it unfolded freely, like a large pale sheet. Grandfather pulled the mainsail up along the mast, slowly, one tug at a time, until it stood straight and taut against the bright sky.